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Imagination and the Distinction

Between Intuition and Image in Kant
R. Brian Tracz
forthcoming in Ergo

Abstract: The role of intuition in Kant’s account of experience receives peren-

nial philosophical attention. In this essay, I present the textual case that Kant
also makes extensive reference to what he terms “images” that are generated
by the imagination. Beyond this, as I argue, images are fundamentally distinct
from empirical and pure intuitions. Images and empirical intuitions differ in
how they relate to sensation, and all images (even “pure images”) actually de-
pend on pure intuitions. Moreover, all images differ from intuitions in their
structure or format. I then turn to a question that naturally arises on the re-
sulting view: if the imagination produces images, and if images are fundamen-
tally distinct from intuitions, then how do intuitions relate to the imagination?
I outline reasons for thinking that intuitions and their essential features do not
depend on the imagination at all. Though this essay does not decisively argue
for this thesis, the resulting view provides a clear account of the distinction
between the senses and the imagination in Kant’s theory of sensibility.

Kant famously argues that objects are “given to us” in intuitions and “thought” through
concepts, and that both intuitions and concepts are required for “experience” (A – /B –
). Kant’s bold claims about the opposition between intuition and concept (and between
the faculties of sensibility and understanding) attract perennial philosophical interest and
debate, particularly among those interested in Kant’s conception of perceptual experience.
However, because of the tendency to focus particularly on the role of intuitions in Kant’s
overall picture of perceptual experience, it usually goes unnoticed that besides intuitions,
Kant also claims that sensibility produces “images” (Bilder, Einbildungen) and that they are
a “product” of the imagination (A /B ). Though commentators occasionally invoke

References to the Critique of Pure Reason follow the convention of citing the “A” ( ) and “B” ( ) edi-
tions of that work, with the convention (A[page number]/B[page number]). All other references to Kant’s
work are drawn from the Akademie Ausgabe of his works, with the convention of [volume]:[page number].
I have included an appendix with the relevant abbreviations. Though I have consulted the Cambridge
edition English translations of Kant’s work, the translations here are my own.
See the extensive account of the role of images in Kant’s theory of perception by Matherne ( ); see also
Tolley ( ). See Makkreel ( , ch. ) for an overview of different imagistic representations in Kant.
mental images to explain various aspects of Kant’s philosophy of mind, they tend not to
explain what these mental images are or how they relate to Kant’s conception of “image.”
This paper begins by arguing for what I call the Image Thesis. According to the Image
Thesis, Kant systematically invokes images (Bilder, Einbildungen) in his central texts, and
he claims that images are produced by the imagination. After introducing the textual case
for the Image Thesis, I shall advance the stronger Distinctness Thesis: intuitions and images
are fundamentally distinct representations—that is, images are qualitatively and numeri-
cally distinct representations from intuitions. As we shall see, the Distinctness Thesis has
ramifications for Kant’s account of intuition, perception, hallucination, mathematical rep-
resentation, and mental imagery more broadly.
But once we have established the Image Thesis and the Distinctness Thesis, there is a
key lingering question: how do intuitions—representations that are fundamentally distinct
from images—relate to the imagination? Are intuitions and images produced by the imag-
ination? In Section , I argue that though images depend on and are produced by the imag-
ination, intuitions are independent of the imagination and not produced by it. Call this the
No Intuitions Thesis about the imagination. The No Intuitions Thesis is very controversial.
Those who reject it span both sides of the aisle in debates about the conceptual or non-
conceptual nature of intuitions, as well as recent debates about the metaphysics of intu-
itions (and in particular, whether intuitions should be understood in a “representationalist”-
friendly or “naive realist”-friendly way). Some interpreters even take the claim that the
imagination produces intuition (or that the imagination grounds the essential features of
intuitions) to be one of Kant’s most characteristic philosophical contributions, and a cen-
tral part of his theory of space and time.
I do not intend to decisively establish the No Intuitions Thesis in this paper. Doing so
would require delving into the great controversies of Kant scholarship, including the ter-
ritory of the Transcendental Deduction. Instead, in Section , I defend the more modest
claim that some of the most common motivations for thinking that the imagination pro-
duces intuition can be explained away once we accept the Image Thesis and the Distinct-
ness Thesis. Many of the passages in which Kant allegedly claims that the imagination pro-
duces intuitions can be read as claiming that the imagination acts on intuitions to produce
images. Even though Section leaves significant interpretive and philosophical questions
about intuitions unanswered, I think that considering the No Intuitions Thesis a viable in-
terpretive option will help us to better define some of the debates surrounding sensible
representation in Kant’s works.
This article thus argues for three claims: the Image Thesis (in Section ), the Distinctness
Thesis (in Sections – ), and the No Intuitions Thesis (in Section ). In all, these three

See, e.g., Allais ( , ch. ). Still others mention relevant passages in which Kant invokes images, yet do
not indicate how these images relate to intuitions; see especially Ginsborg ( , ff.).
For “intellectualist” or “conceptualist” accounts on which the imagination’s synthesis “generates intu-
itions” or on which intuitions depend on our “imagining space,” see Land ( , – , ) and
Longuenesse ( , ). See also Grüne ( ), Haag ( ), Waxman ( ), and Williams ( , ).
For “non-intellectualist” or “non-conceptualist” accounts on which intuitions depend on the imagina-
tion, see Peter Rohs’s account in Wenzel ( , ) as well as Allais ( ), though Allais’s more recent
account is consistent with the No Intuitions Thesis (see Allais, ).
See, e.g., Gomes ( , , ) and Gomes ( ) for a naive realist account, and Stephenson ( ) for a
representationalist account.
See especially Haag ( ), Horstmann ( , § ), Longuenesse ( ), and Waxman ( ).
theses give us a blueprint for understanding why the imagination is a special faculty for
Kant and how it is different from other faculties of the mind, a point I briefly consider in
the concluding Section . Exploring the tenability of these theses will help us to better
understand how both the senses and the imagination, as the two subfaculties of sensibility,
are involved in perceptual experience for Kant.

1 The Image Thesis

As I noted above, some recent readers of Kant claim that he never gave serious considera-
tion to the idea of a mental “image” or “phantasm” distinct from intuition. This section
introduces Kant’s theory of images by arguing that Kant invokes images in a systematic
way as products of the imagination (the Image Thesis). Moreover, it will motivate my con-
tention explored later that “image (Bild, Einbildung)” is not a mere terminological variant
of “intuition (Anschauung).” A theme that emerges, and which I will develop in later sec-
tions, is that images are produced by acts of the imagination that are directed at intuitions.
To begin, there is a clear historical motivation for attributing an account of images to
Kant. Many of Kant’s direct influences acknowledged the existence of images (Bilder or
Einbildungen) as a representational type, and they held that these images were produced by
the “power of imagination” or “power to imagine” (Einbildungskraft). Consider Johannes
Nikolaus Tetens’s Philosophische Versuche, which Kant read thoroughly prior to publishing
the Critique of Pure Reason. In that work, Tetens argues that the representations that the
imagination “pull[s] out” from the “outer senses” are called “images” or “phantasmata.”
(Tetens, , – ) Furthermore, he claims that these images are distinct from the orig-
inal sensations from which they are derived, and that images depend on the “power to
grasp [Fassungskraft],” which he calls “perception [Perception].” Images are not produced
merely from activations of our senses; rather, images are distinct representations produced
from such sensory activations, and they can exist even when such sensory activation is no
longer present.
Similarly, Kant maintains that the power of imagination (Einbildungskraft) is distinct
from sense (Sinn). Like Tetens, he denies that images are the products of mere sensory acti-
vation. “The senses,” Kant writes, cannot “produce images [Bilder] of objects” (A ). The
senses cannot “put together” or associate different sensations or impressions in the way
that imagination can. The imagination is thus left with the task of producing images—a
task the intellect itself cannot perform. Like Tetens, Kant also explicitly claims that im-

As a recent monograph puts it, “the notion of phantasm”—the Greek term for “image”—as a representa-
tion “produced by the imagination on the basis of sensible species delivered by our senses, is foreign to
Kant” (Pollok, , ). According to another scholar, Kant claims that “we have no image of numbers”
(Axinn, , ).
For instance, Wolff ( , § ) writes in the German Metaphysics that “the representations of such things
that are not present, one tends to call images [Einbildungen].” Furthermore, he claims that “images [Ein-
bildungen] do not represent everything clearly that was contained in sensations [Empfindungen]” Wolff
( , § , cf. § ). See also Baumgarten ( , § , cf. § ).
Tetens ( , ) distinguishes, for instance, between “impressions” and the “traces” of impressions that
are distinct from those impressions. These traces are the eventual constituents of what Tetens calls “rep-
resentations” and “images.” Cf. Section . .
For this reason, the imagination “belongs to sensibility” (B , cf. A ). Compare the many other in-
stances from various parts of the critical period: MMr ( – ), : ; MD ( – ), : ; Anth,
ages can represent objects that are not present—which is unsurprising given Kant’s gloss
on the “power of imagination” as “the faculty for representing an object even without its
presence in intuition” (B ).
Images as a respresentational type are a centerpiece of Kant’s taxonomy of synthesis in
the first Critique. Consider the section headings that announce each synthesis in the A edi-
tion of the Transcendental Deduction:

. On the Synthesis of Apprehension in the Intuition [Apprehension in der Anschauung]

(A )
. On the Synthesis of Reproduction in the Image [Reproduktion in der Einbildung] (A )
. On the Synthesis of Recognition in the Concept [Rekognition im Begriffe] (A )

Crucial here is that Kant is marking a progression of three representational types: his head-
ings suggest a progression from intuition (Anschauung) to image (Einbildung) to concept
(Begriff ). The act of apprehension is “directed at the intuition [auf die Anschauung gerichtet]”
(A ). Similarly, in another passage, Kant provides the example that “I make the empir-
ical intuition of a house into perception through apprehension of its manifold” (B ). In
this case, apprehension has an “empirical intuition” as its input and a “perception” as its
output. So prima facie, the synthesis of apprehension operates on an intuition.
Kant emphasizes the progression from intuition to image later in the A-edition Tran-
scendental Deduction. He claims that the imagination “bring[s]” the “manifold of intu-
ition” into an “image [Bild]” (A ). To bring about this progression from manifold of intu-
ition to image, Kant suggests that the imagination must “take up the impressions” of the
senses, that is, “apprehend” those impressions. Kant then invokes the second activity in
the progression: apprehension “would bring forth no image [Bild]” without a capacity for
“calling back a perception” (A ). Thus, just as the Einbildung involves the synthesis of
reproduction, so too does the Bild in this passage involve the “reproductive faculty” of the
power of imagination. Both terms denote a single representational type, an image, paired
with a particular mental activity, reproduction. What’s more, intuitions and images seem
to be distinct parts of the progression that Kant describes in both of these passages.
In the Schematism chapter of the first Critique, Kant turns to the relationship between
images and concepts. Consider Kant’s description of a schema as a “representation of a
general procedure of the power of imagination for providing a concept its image [Bild]”
(A /B ). Just as we progress from reproduction in the image to the recognition in the
concept, so too we progress from an image to the concept that is provided with the image. The
schema, in turn, is a representation of some protocol of the power of imagination for pro-
viding that image to the concept. Kant notes several sentences later that both images and
: . As Kant’s remarks, the faculty of imagination “must be distinguished from the senses as much as
from the concepts” (ML [ – ?], : ).
See Section . . Cf. Anth, : , ; MMr, : ; MVo, : ; MD, : .
An even clearer indication that Kant has a progression of representations in mind comes in one of his notes
in which he claims that synthesis occurs “either of apprehension as sensations or of reproduction as im-
ages [Einbildungen] or recognition as concepts” (R , : ). Longuenesse ( , ) also acknowl-
edges that we should read “Einbildung” in the A-Deduction passage as involving a representational type
of the power of imagination. Yet she seems to think that this image simply is an intuition.
See also Tolley ( ), Matherne ( , , note ), and Allais ( ).
For more on this passage, see Tolley ( , ).
schemata are “products” of the “productive power of imagination” (A – /B ). Fur-
thermore, he claims that images are produced “through” and “in accordance with” schemata.
So in the Schematism chapter, Kant invokes images in a way that parallels his taxonomy of
synthesis.
In sum, for Kant, the productive power of imagination produces images. Put tersely, the
imagination produces mental images (Bilder, Einbildungen) through acts of apprehension
and reproduction, and these images accord with schemata. Such images include an “im-
age of a line” (B ), an “image of a triangle” (A /B ), and an “image of the number
five” (A /B ). In the number case, “if I place [setze]” or apprehend “five points in a row,
. . . . ., this is an image of the number five” (A /B ). Kant also speaks of an “image of
a city” and how it is formed when the mind “goes through” and “tak[es] ... together” the
intuitive manifold, which is strikingly similar to how he characterizes apprehension in the
first Critique (A ). These observations taken together support the Image Thesis.

2 Images and Empirical Intuitions

We can further unpack the Image Thesis by turning to our defense of the Distinctness
Thesis—the claim that intuitions are fundamentally distinct from images. I shall argue for
the Distinctness Thesis regarding empirical intuitions by establishing three different claims:
first, that empirical intuitions do not depend on images; second, that images can occur in the
absence of empirical intuitions; and third, that images differ in their format from empiri-
cal intuitions. By the end of this section, we shall see that the combination of these claims
entails the Distinctness Thesis.
Since this section begins by considering empirical intuition, we will need a working con-
ception of empirical intuition. For Kant, empirical intuitions are representations that are
“related to the object through sensation” (A /B ). This “undetermined object” of empir-
ical intuition is called an “appearance.” Thus, in every case of empirical intuiting there is an
intuited appearance—Kant operates with a distinction between mental acts (or vehicles)
and their contents. Humans have two broad classes of empirical intuitions with different
contents: outer empirical intuitions of spatial appearances, and inner empirical intuitions

In this paper, I remain agnostic about how images are “provided” to concepts, and whether images depend
on concepts. For a concept-dependent account, see Matherne ( , § ). For an account on which images
do not depend on antecedent concept possession, see Ginsborg ( )—though Ginsborg does not seem
to distinguish images from intuitions.
I remain silent here on whether schemata are genetically prior to images, or whether images depend on
schemata or concepts or vice-versa. Moreover, I am agnostic in this paper about whether images also
depend on recognition in a concept; Matherne ( ) explicitly argues that images depend on concepts,
but not on recognition in a concept.
The way Kant talks about the generation of magnitudes in image formation bears a close resemblance to
how Segner ( , ff.), whom Kant cites, describes the process. Cf. Kant’s reference to Segner in a note
on images of number (AA, : ).
ML , : – . This passage is discussed extensively by Makkreel ( , ch. ) and Matherne ( ).
Cf. Sellars ( , , – ), the locus classicus for this helpful distinction. In order to be neutral about how
appearances relate to “phenomena” or “bodies,” I will simply distinguish the the “act” and the “content”
of empirical intuition. I thus remain agnostic here about whether the content of an empirical intuition
(the appearance) is distinct from or identical to the objects in the “act-content-object” schema (cf. Tolley,
, ); thus, my proposal is compatible with a number of ways of understanding Kant’s empirical
realism and transcendental idealism.
of temporal appearances (A – /B ). For reasons of space, I will focus on outer intuition
in this essay.

2.1 Empirical Intuitions without Images

In order to establish the Distinctness Thesis, our first task is to show that empirical intu-
itions are independent of and prior to images. As I shall argue, Kant’s account of how em-
pirical intuitions are brought to consciousness suggests that empirical intuitions are prior
to and independent of the act of apprehension required for the generation of images.
As an illustrative example of an unconscious intuition, Kant claims that “Newton’s lamel-
lae” that are the hypothesized microphysical basis of color “really are represented, albeit
without consciousness, in our empirical intuition.” Thus, according to Kant, whenever
we intuit colored objects, our empirical intuitions actually represent the miniscule “lamel-
lae” underlying color. Kant similarly claims that the “field of intuitions of sense [Sinnenan-
schauungen] and sensations of which we are not conscious” is “immense.” In contrast,
“clear” or conscious representations “contain only infinitely few points of this field which
lie open to consciousness,” largely because “everything the assisted eye discovers by means
of the telescope (perhaps directed toward the moon) or microscope (directed toward infu-
soria) is seen by means of our naked eyes.” These passages suggest that we do indeed sense
objects like “infusoria” (small single-celled organisms) and Newton’s lamellae, and that
these items really are represented in “empirical intuition” or an “intuition of sense,” albeit
“without consciousness.”
Kant’s overall theory of conscious (or “clear”) representation might strike us today as
implausible. But one of the thoughts behind the theory is both plausible and central to his
account of empirical intuition: some objects affect our senses, and our empirical intuitions
represent those objects, even if we do not notice those objects. Our senses can represent
these objects because they are capacities for responding to certain types of objects that
affect them—even (perhaps implausibly) very distant or very small objects. In turn, we
form empirical intuitions of those objects, “albeit without consciousness.”
But images require an additional activity, namely, that the imagination “take together”
those empirical intuitions in a certain way. Kant maintains that the imagination is a “nec-
essary ingredient in perception” (NB: not intuition), and he thinks that it is a mistake to
think that the “senses” produce “images” of objects (A , note). This opens up the pos-
sibility that one of the products of the imagination—images—partially explains why we
are conscious of certain intuited objects (like dogs and tables) but not others (Newton’s
lamellae and distant stars in the Milky Way). If the imagination’s apprehension is directed
at empirical intuition and is what makes “perception, i.e., empirical consciousness of it (as
appearance), possible” (B ), then some parts of an intuition might not be apprehended
at a given time and poised for perceptual awareness. Indeed, the fact that objects are not
“perceived with consciousness ... in no way abolishes their specific property as parts be-

Though see the end of Section . and Footnote for some discussion of inner intuition.
UE, : . For further discussion, see Langton ( , ff.).
Anth, : . Cf. MVo, : : even if we remove the faculties responsible for “consciousness,” both “sensa-
tion” and “imagination” still remain.
Kant’s views on “clear” and “obscure” representation were similar to Leibniz’s doctrine of “minute per-
ceptions.” Cf. BL, : , Anth, : . See Grüne ( ) and Indregard ( ) for contrasting accounts.
longing to a merely empirical intuition of the senses.” Thus, some empirical intuitions
represent objects that we do not apprehend and consequently do not bring to conscious-
ness. Indeed, Kant chalks up our incapacity to form such conscious representations to our
limited “power of imagination,” which is not able to “apprehend [aufzufassen] the manifold
of the intuition” of minute objects “with consciousness.” Yet Kant emphasizes that such
objects are nevertheless represented in intuition, even though the contents of those intu-
itions do not stand in the relation to consciousness that Kant calls “perception.”
We would thus lack images of such objects, since images depend on apprehension. Kant
himself seems to couch his conclusion in terms of images. He suggests that the fact that
we have no image of an object does not show that that object cannot be represented by our
sensibility. Eliding the complexities of Kant’s critique of Eberhard, Kant argues that we
cannot slide from the claim that (a) we have no “image” of hypothesized objects of meta-
physics (like a simple substance or, by extension, Newton’s lamellae) to the claim that (b)
those hypothesized objects are “super-sensible.” He says that “it does not at all follow
from the fact that no image corresponds to” such hypothesized objects that “their repre-
sentation is something super-sensible.” For sensibility would still represent such objects
through “sensation, hence an element of sensibility.” So Kant is relying on a distinction be-
tween two ways of sensibly representing an object, one through images and one through
sensation in empirical intuition. His view seems to be that it is simply not the case that in
order to represent something sensibly, one must first form an image of it.
The Distinctness Thesis gains further support when we consider that empirical intu-
itions do not themselves change when they are apprehended or made conscious. Con-
scious empirical intuitions and unconscious empirical intuitions are not different qua em-
pirical intuition. Just as an “illuminated” and an “unilluminated” wall are not different
qua wall, so too are a conscious and an unconscious intuition not different qua intuition.
UE, : . The context makes it clear that Kant is criticizing Eberhard’s conflation of “sensing” and “con-
sciously perceiving.”
This might seem to be in tension with Kant’s claim in the famous Stufenleiter that “cognition” is “either in-
tuition or concept.” A cognition is an “objective perception [Perception],” that is, an objective “representa-
tion with consciousness” (A /B ). On one reading, the Stufenleiter states a number of genus/species
relations, such that intuitions are a species of cognitions; thus, all intuitions are conscious representa-
tions on this reading. In response to this worry, it is important to note that the species reading is not
the only available reading of this passage; instead, Kant might be indicating that “looking within cogni-
tion (among its component parts), we find partly intuition, partly concept” (Tolley, , ). At least two
further points motivate this alternative. On the one hand, a strict species reading of the Stufenleiter is in
tension with the texts cited above in which Kant explicitly claims that we have unconscious intuitions
and sensations—not all intuitions are representations with consicousness. On the other hand, the strict
species reading would imply that “ideas” (like those of God, the soul, and the world-whole) are a species
of concepts, which in turn are a species of “cognition”—an idea that Kant seems to reject (cf. A /B ).
UE, : ; Kant also seems to think that the senses themselves would need to be “sharpened” in order to
facilitate our imagination’s apprehension. Cf. UE, : , where Kant makes a similar point about our
limited “faculty for grasping [Fassungsvermögen].”
See UE, : , footnote, where Kant claims that such intuitions lack “aesthetic clarity.”
UE, : . Kant remarks that such a hypothesized object would still be part of “an image, that is, of a
sensible intuition.” Though Kant seems to be conflating image and intuition here, we need to consider
that in the first part of this sentence, Kant is countenancing the idea that we have “no image of a simple
part,” and he wishes to conclude that this lack of an image does not “banis[h] the simple from sensory
intuition and its objects” on Eberhard’s account ( : ). Kant does that by claiming that sensation can
relate us to such objects, even absent the imagination’s production of images.
I thank an anonymous reviewer for pressing me to clarify this point.
As Kant puts the point, the “consciousness of a representation makes no difference in the
specific constitution of the representation; for it can be conjoined with all representations”
(UE, : ). As an example, “consciousness of an empirical intuition is called perception”
(UE, : ; cf. Prol, : ; B – ). Similarly, “consciousness is really a representation
that another representation is in me.” The clear intuition complex might involve an ad-
ditional representation beyond the intuition, but the intuition itself does not differ—the
difference between a clear and an obscure intuition is the way that consciousness relates
to one unchanging intuition.
In Section . , we shall see that the images specify a particular manner in which an in-
tuition is apprehended. And as we have just seen, the manner in which an intuition is ap-
prehended partially determines how (and whether) that intuition is poised to be brought
to consciousness or “perception.” As I have argued, the reason we are not conscious of New-
ton’s lamellae is that our imagination cannot apprehend those minute parts, even though
we sense them. Since images depend on this apprehension, they cannot be identical to
empirical intuitions that do not themselves change as to their constitution pre- and post-
apprehension. Images are better thought of as the content of a representation of those
intuitions in consciousness or perception (a point I explain in Section . ). For this reason,
empirical intuitions do not require images, even if images are involved in relating empirical
intuitions to consciousness.

2.2 Images without Empirical Intuitions

The present section turns to the second component of the argument for the Distinctness
Thesis: though images depend on empirical intuitions, images can nevertheless occur in
the absence of empirical intuitions.
For Kant, it is true that “in order for us even to imagine something as external,” we
require “an outer sense” (B – n). The “power of imagination” can “impress images
[Bilder] upon us” only “in relation to outer sense” (R , : ). Yet though images de-
pend on both imagination and sense, we can also “immediately distinguish the mere re-
ceptivity of an outer intuition [Anschauung] from the spontaneity that characterizes every
image [Einbildung]” in virtue of having an outer sense (B – n). Kant thus marks off
two representational types—“outer intuition” and “image [Einbildung]”—and he suggests
that outer intuitions involve the “mere receptivity” of outer sense, whereas images involve
the “spontaneity” of imagination. Kant repeats this point in notes: “we really distinguish”
what he calls an “image [Einbildung]” from “intuitions of the senses [Sinnenanschauungen]”
(R , : )
JL, : . This point reinforces Kant’s claim that the “content [Inhalt]” of a representation does not change
when it is made distinct (that is, when we become conscious of its parts) (A /B ).
And even though we might be able to imagine what it would be to apprehend them.
Note that even though image production might not be sufficient for consciousness of an object
(cf. A /B ), images are poised for consciousness in a way that mere empirical intuition is not—even
if some additional activity or faculty (like that of apperception) is required for them to be conscious (or
occurrently conscious). As a comparison, Tolley and Tracz argue that at least for Tetens, images (them-
selves representations generated from sensations) need not be conscious, and that acts of the imagina-
tion are not sufficient for consciousness (or “becoming aware [Gewahrnehmen]”). In the secondary lit-
erature, compare Grüne ( , , , ff.), who maintains that “blind” empirical intuitions can only
be made into conscious objective representations through the sensible synthesis of the imagination that
makes intuitions “clear”; for views more similar to the present, see Matherne ( ) and Tolley ( ).
 Though this point parallels what we already saw in Section , Kant also adds that to have
an empirical intuition of sense, “the object must be represented as present,” which sets
it off from “an image [Einbildung] as intuition without the presence of the object” (R ,
: ). Though Kant sometimes refers to “intuition” or “intuitive representation” in a way
that encompasses both images and empirical intuitions, I argue that there are fundamen-
tal differences between these two representations of sensibility. A key difference is that
the object of an intuition of sense is not merely “present,” but “represented as present.” I
shall now argue that one representational difference between empirical intuition (or “outer
intuition” or “intuition of sense”) and image is that empirical intuitions involve sensations
in a way that images do not.
The “organic” senses produce sensations when they are affected by objects. Kant says
that “the effect of an object on the capacity for representation, insofar as we are affected by
it, is sensation” (A /B ). Sensations thus are affection-dependent representations. But
beyond this affection-dependence, Kant also suggests that sensations play an essential role
in our representation of objects as present. “Sensation is that which designates an actuality
in space and time” (A ), and sensation “presupposes the actual presence of the object”
(A /B ). Sensation “originates from the presence of a certain object” (LB, : ). In
several of his works, Kant consistently distinguishes the “power of imagination” that rep-
resents objects “even without the presence of the object” (A ; B ) from “sense” as the
“the faculty of intuition of the present” or “sensation [sensatio]” (MM, : . Cf. Anth,
: ; MVo, : ; ML , : ; MD, : ). Sensations thus play an important role in
representing present objects in space and time. Yet because sensations by themselves do
not relate to objects, sensations represent present objects only if suitably involved in em-
pirical intuition. Now these general points suggest a straightforward proposal for how
empirical intuitions represent objects “as present”: empirical intuitions involve or contain
sensation as a part, whereas images themselves do not involve sensation in the same way.
Images (which do not presuppose the presence of their objects) and empirical intuitions
depend on sensation in different ways.
Kant denies that the imagination produces new sensations when it produces images. The
“power of imagination” is “not creative [schöpferisch], but must get the material for its im-
ages [Bildungen] from the senses” (Anth, : . Cf. R , : ). Moreover, “sensations
from the senses cannot, in their composition, be made by the power of imagination, but
must be drawn originally from the faculty of sense” (Anth, : ). Even though the imag-

The Distinctness Thesis is compatible with the idea that there is some broader genus of “intuitive represen-
tation” or, as Kant occasionally writes, “sensible intuition” to which both images and pure and empirical
intuitions belong (e.g., B n; B ; R , : ). Indeed, Kant writes that we have “two sorts of in-
tuition”: “intuition of sense [Sinnenanschauung]” and “image [Einbildung]” (R , : ). Cf. McLear
( , ). Grüne ( , , note ) claims that Kant lacks a unified account of intuition, which might be
true of the broader notion of intuitive representation on my account (since there is a fundamental distinc-
tion between image and intuition on my account). In all, McLear, Grüne, and I seem to agree that some
sort of fundamental distinction is to be made, though for different reasons.
Anth, : – . I focus on outer sensation here, since the topic of inner sensations is rather complicated,
and there are not many accounts of what they could be for Kant in the literature; for contrasting accounts,
see Kraus ( ) and Indregard ( ). Cf. Anth, : , : .
Kant’s view on sensation as fundamental to representing existing and present objects was critical to his
predecessors as well, especially Christian August Crusius. For a discussion, see Watkins ( , ).
See Jankowiak ( ) for a full account of how sensations are “subjective” or “objective” (in contrast to my
account, he maintains that empirical intuitions depend on the imagination).
ination can be “productive,” the “material” of its representations must first be “given to
our faculty of sense” (Anth, : ). So if one has never had a sensation of red by having
one’s senses affected by an object, then one’s imagination cannot generate such a sensa-
tion, even by “composition.” That is what it means to say that the power of imagination is
not “creative.”
When we unpack Kant’s account of image production, we find evidence not only that
the imagination does not produce new sensations, but that it does not produce sensations
full stop. In turn, images would then not involve sensation production but, instead, some-
thing like “copies” or “traces” of previously produced sensations. As a historical motiva-
tion for this reading, we can again turn to Tetens, who claims that “representations of
sensation [Empfindungsvorstellungen]” or “images” are obtained from sensations, and are
produced when the imagination takes up “traces” of sensations. He explicitly claims that
these images can outlast sensation, such that images can occur “without the sensation be-
ing present” (Tetens, , ). Given Kant’s positive appraisal of Tetens’ account of per-
ceptual psychology (R , : ), it would not be surprising if Kant simply agreed with
Tetens on this point.
Moreover, in his discussion of perceptual hallucination and illusion in the Anthropol-
ogy, Kant claims that “illusions [Täuschungen]” involve “taking images [Einbildungen] for
sensations [Empfindungen]” (Anth, : ). So illusions involve confusing images and sensa-
tions. Plausibly, taking an image to be a sensation is a confusion because images are not
sensations or composed of sensations. Otherwise, the mistake that Kant describes would
not be a mistake at all—the subject would not be wrong in taking images for sensations if
images themselves were composed of sensations. Illusions do indeed involve images that
represent outer sensory qualities in virtue of containing traces of sensation (illusions are
not merely pathological belief states), but the subject need not simultaneously undergo a
sensation to have such images.
The images in dreams also do not contain sensations as parts. In his precritical Dreams of
a Spirit Seer, Kant provides an account of daydreaming on which daydreaming (of “waking
dreamers”) differs from regular dreaming. He claims that though the “images in ques-
tion may very well occupy” a daydreamer, they still “will not deceive him” (TG, : ). The
daydreamer is not deceived because he can differentiate “his fantastical images [Bilder] as
hatched out by himself” from “the real sensation [wirkliche Empfindung] as an impression of
the senses.” Yet when the subject falls asleep, the external senses are no longer affected by
objects, and “all that remains are the representations he has created himself.” As a result,
when we dream, we are deceived by our images. On Kant’s view, the confusion of images
and sensations arises because “there is no sensation which allows” the subject, “by com-
paring” the “real sensation” with the illusory image, to distinguish self-made phantoms
from sensations.
In short, our imagination can “invent [erdichten] something for ourselves, but this is not
a sensation” (LB, : – ). For instance, suppose I am having a sensation of red while

Note that the subject is not merely confusing an absent object for an present object, but an image for a
sensation.
Elsewhere in the essay, Kant claims that the illusion of “visionary” metaphysicians occurs when “images of
the imagination [Bilder der Phantasie]” assume the “semblance of sensation [Schein der Empfindung]” (TG,
: ). Cf. the similar discussion of “enthusiasm” and “spiritualism” as the illusions under discussion in
the Anthropology passage ( : ).
imagining green in a daydream. I have a sensation of red and an image of green. According
to Kant, when I am in this daydream, I do not have the task of sorting out a heap of occurrent
sensations, some of which (green sensations) are produced by the imagination, others of
which (red sensations) are produced by the senses. Instead, the asymmetry between real
sensations and images that lack sensations facilitates the distinction between occurrent
sensing and occurrent imagining. As another example, when I entertain a mental image
of a pirate, I might represent a rough masculine face, the characteristic hat, and the eye
patch. But suppose I imagine his shirt in only very coarse detail. If someone asks me how
many buttons are on his shirt, it is not as if I have a sensation array available to me, on the
basis of which I could apprehend how many buttons there “really” are. There are as many
buttons as I imagine there to be. These examples illustrate what I take to be the hallmark
of Kant’s account, namely, that I am able to realize that I am engaging in mental imagery
by comparing my mental images with actual sensations that I enjoy.
Empirical intuitions thus involve sensations in a way that images do not. As a result,
empirical intuitions represent objects “as present” in a way that images do not. So not only
are empirical intuitions prior to and independent of images, but images are also seem to
be possible when we lack sensation-involving empirical intuitions that represent present
objects. This “double-dissociation” of the images and intuitions from one another suggests
that they are fundamentally distinct.

2.3 The Structure of Images and Intuitions

The third point in favor of the Distinctness Thesis is that images and empirical intuitions
differ qualitatively in their compositional structure. As I shall now argue, the format of im-
ages stand in a many-to-one relation to the format of intuitions, and this difference in for-
mat entails a difference in content. This section will bring together our previous discussion
by showing how images arise when empirical intuitions are “determined” by the power of
imagination, and it will help us see a fundamental continuity between empirical images
and pure images, to which I turn in the next section.
Since apprehension and reproduction are the two central activities of image production,
it is not surprising that apprehension and reproduction jointly account for the structure of
images. Kant describes apprehension as a “running through” and “taking together” of the
“manifoldness” of intuition (A ), as well as a “placing together” or “composition [Zusam-
mensetzung]” of the parts of an intuition (B ), or a “positioning together” or “juxtapo-
sition [Zusammenstellung]” of the parts of an intuition (A /B ). These glosses suggest
that apprehension is part of a specialized grouping or perceptual organization procedure.
Apprehension is required to generate representations of groupings—without apprehen-
sion, the manifold parts given in intuition would not be “represented as such” (A ).

Perhaps some readers will object that the imagination actually does produce sensations, but that it does
so by affecting inner sense (cf. Stephenson, , ). But if the reproductive imagination affects inner
sense in producing an image, then inner sense would presumably produce inner sensations, not outer
sensations of colors and sounds. If so, the production of inner sensations does not explain how images
present us with outer sensory qualities—the role of a “trace” or “reproduced” outer sensation seems ine-
liminable.
Kant repeatedly claims that we apprehend appearances (as the contents of intuition) at, e.g., A /B ,
A /B , A /B , A /B , A /B .
See also Allais ( , ). McLear ( ) argues that intuitions lack a “privileged structure” while judg-
 Prior to apprehension, the intuition itself is not grouped, “composed,” or “determined”
in Kant’s sense. Kant often claims that the inputs to apprehension are “undetermined,” as
when he claims that an appearance is the “undetermined object [unbestimmte Gegenstand]
of an empirical intuition” (A /B ). Yet he also claims that these undetermined contents
can be “determined” by the imagination, which is the “faculty for determining sensibility
a priori” (B ). As a result, we have what Kant calls at one point a “determinate intuition
[bestimmte Anschauung]” (B ). As I argued in the case of clear intuition, we need not
think of determined intuition as a modification of the intuition itself; we can instead think
of “determination” as producing something from the intuition or adding something to it. So
the claim that a “determinate intuition” depends on the synthesis of apprehension or the
imagination does not imply that apprehension produces intuitions full stop. Images are a
natural candidate for what is produced from intuition. Indeed, one of Kant’s examples of
“determining” an intuition is the “drawing” of an “image [Bilde] of a line” (B ). I want
to suggest that once the imagination brings together the manifold in a particular way, it
generates an image that represents that manifold “as such.” The image that is generated
from an intuition determinately represents the content of the intuition (the appearance).
A concrete instance of this determinate representation involves the representation of re-
lations between parts of the appearance (that is, “groupings”). Take the example of an im-
age of six (cf. Section ). Kant claims that we have a schema “through which” such an im-
age becomes possible—namely, the schema that indicates the procedure that we know as
counting. The procedure that the schema specifies has two basic components. First, the
imagination has to select some unit to iterate. Suppose it selects a dot as its unit. Second,
the imagination has to apprehend this unit several times—the imagination treats all dots
as of the same kind but as spatially differentiated. This means that the given representation
in Figure is to be treated as a group of objects that are of the same kind (in Kant’s terminol-
ogy, they are “homogeneous”), each of which is a unit (no dot can be “double-counted”).
Figure diagrams the apprehension of the dots.
The intuition in Figure represents items in space, while the image of six in Figure
represents those items in a determinate manner. The red arrows denote the activity of suc-
cessive apprehension. When apprehension moves to a dot (say, the fourth dot from the left,
in the act symbolized by the third arrow from the left), the imagination simultaneously

ments possess a privileged structure, and I think the argument can be extended to images. For more on
canonical decomposition and privileged structure, see Fodor ( ).
Kant makes a similar point in his discussion of judgment: concepts relate “to some representation of a still
undetermined object [von einem noch unbestimmten Gegenstande]” (A /B , my emphasis). These unde-
termined objects are “certain appearances that come before us” (A /B ).
Kant also claims that the imagination’s apprehension is required for relations between objects to be
“determinately given in an intuition” (B ); intuitions are “determined with regard to one of the log-
ical functions of judgment” by means of the categories (B ). Land ( ) notes the importance of
“determinate” or “determined” intuition, but then suggests that it shows that intuitions simpliciter de-
pend on the imagination.
Kant claims that the transcendental schema of quantity, the “schema of magnitude (quantitas),” is num-
ber, and number is “a representation that takes together [zusammenbefasst] the successive addition of one
(homogeneous) unit to another” (A /B ). Cf. Friedman ( , ff.), Longuenesse ( , ch. ), Sha-
bel ( ), and Sutherland ( ).
This process is discussed by Golob ( ). Plausibly, there is some primitive grasp of a “basic measure”
that is required to start this iterated process.
Of course, for Kant, every “item” in the manifold is itself composed of a manifold.
 Figure : Intuition

Figure : Image of six

reproduces the previously apprehended dots (i.e., those contained in the three left-most
boxes). Apprehension successively grasps each unit, and reproduction reproduces the ap-
prehended units while further units are being grasped. The representation symbolized by
the red boxes is the image.
As Kant writes in his Preisschrift, “the representation of the composite [Zusammengeset-
zten], as such, is not mere intuition, but rather requires the concept of composition, insofar
as it is applied to intuition in space and time” (FM, : . Cf. R , : ). On the pro-
posed model, apprehension is the activity that introduces a “representation of the com-
posite” that is not present in the “mere intuition.” Unlike the mere intuition, the image
reflects a particular way of composing the intuition. In contrast, uncomposed or “mere”
intuitions can be composed in countlessly many ways, corresponding to the many images
we can form from them. And this one-to-many relationship between the mere uncom-
posed intuition and the image is grounded in the sytheses of apprehension and reproduc-
tion: apprehension selects which units to apprehend (e.g., it doesn’t apprehend non-dots),
while reproduction reproduces the units relevant to the image in question (e.g., it doesn’t
reproduce items the imagination apprehended yesterday that are unrelated to the present
image). Without both processes, an image of six could never arise.
To see the one-to-many relationship between intuitions and images, note that the imag-
ination could have used two dots as the “unit” measure, and then produced an image of
by apprehending three pairs of dots, as in Figure .
This discussion illustrates that a single uncomposed intuition corresponds to multiple possi-
ble images. For the intuition (Figure ) is compatible with at least two different ways of
“carving” or “grouping” the manifold (Figures and ). In one case, an image of three is
produced; in another case, an image of six is produced. The image that the imagination
generates depends on which unit it selects, and how many times it iterates that unit.
Therefore, the representational format of images does not supervene on the representa-
tional format of intuitions in two respects. On the one hand, which image the imagination
forms is not determined by the intuition, since there is a one-to-many relationship between
 Figure : Image of three

an intuition and the images it is possible to form from that intuition. On the other hand, the
structure of even a single image is not determined by the intuition. For apprehension and
reproduction play an essential role in structuring an image: apprehension is directed at the
intuition in selecting certain units, while reproduction is required to selectively reproduce
certain previously apprehended units. In short, the structure of images is not determined
by the structure of intuitions alone.
If the above account is correct, then images are representations with a special structure.
To echo Fodor ( ), the image has a specific or “canonical” composition. That is, just
like the sentence ‘Karpov is in the yard’ has a special “canonical” way of being composed
and decomposed—namely, into ‘Karpov’ and ‘is in the yard’ (and not into ‘Karpov is in’
and ‘the yard’)—so too do images need to be composed and decomposed in a certain way
rather than another. The explanation for why images have a certain structure—why an
image of six arises instead of an image of three—depends on what determines the “canon”
of composition. The matter becomes complicated once we try to consider why the human
imagination forms (say) rabbit-shape images and not (say) two-legs-and-one-ear images.
Though I will not settle the question here, there seem to be two different approaches. On
the one hand, perhaps images have the structure they do merely because of features of the
imagination independent of the understanding. On the other hand, perhaps the structure
of (at least some) images also depends on the understanding. Broadly speaking, these
two options reflect a “bottom-up” and a “top-down” explanation of the etiology of images,
respectively. Deciding for either model is a task for further research. But on both models,
two different images could result from the same undetermined intuition.
This account can be applied to everyday perceptual cases. Kant notes that it takes a
special effort of the imagination to “illustrate” the complex manifold that is given in intu-

Fodor himself calls it “canonical decomposition,” which I believes comes to the same thought.
One might invoke, say, certain laws that govern the imagination in particular, such as the “empirical law”
of association or the “law of reproduction” (A ). Moreover, one might understand the notion of a “ba-
sic measure” (mentioned in Footnote ) in terms of pre-conceptual “pop-out” of certain objects. The
notion of pre-conceptual “pop-out” of perceptual phenomena is an example of a phenomenon that in-
volves organization beyond “low-level” representation by the senses, even though it need not depend on
concepts or intellectual representation (see Treisman, ).
One might invoke, say, concepts such as Kant’s categories that serve as “rules” for the understanding
(B ); cf. Longuenesse ( ), which provides an account of categories as “rules of synthesis.”
I take Matherne ( , § ) and Ginsborg ( ) to be arguing for variants of the top-down account, since
both of them take the understanding to be essential to image formation (though they differ on whether
images depend on concepts).
Note that this model does not require that determinate intuitions (complexes of the undetermined intu-
ition and the image) are fully determinate—only that they are determinate in respect to some feature.
ition. Even the mundane case of perceiving an apple has this structure. The image takes
together particular parts of the intuited appearance—say, the shape of the apple’s stem
and the apple’s redness—and represents them in an image. I might not apprehend a small
blemish on the apple, or notice one of its dimples—I might not represent those features in
an image—even though I intuit those features. The image might also represent features
that are not present in the empirical intuition (like the apple’s backside or its juiciness, as-
suming that I am not tasting it). In short, the empirical intuition still represents the apple
and objects in the space surrounding it through sensation, but the empirical intuition does
not represent any particular way of relating the spatial features to one another, nor does
it represent absent features. Moreover, this same model could be applied to non-spatial
inner intuition: apprehension could group the intuition of a musical melody into distinct
“phrases,” insofar as tempo and rhythm are parts of the temporal form of the music. We
can also form images of “the time from one noon to the next” by grouping together a certain
sets of episodes or moments (A ).
I thus think that we should understand a “determinate intuition” as a complex of an (un-
composed) intuition and an image produced from it. As in the case of clear or conscious
empirical intuition, the empirical intuition does not itself change during the process of de-
termination; the spatially ordered manifold of sensations is not altered between various
ways of composing that manifold. Rather, the additional representational structure is an
image distinct from that empirical intuition; moreover, in virtue of this added structure,
new contents (e.g., “three”) are generated that have images as their vehicles. An image is
not merely a set of empirical intuitions, but a distinct representation of the contents of an
intuition. After all, I take it that it is an interpretive desideratum that the imagination pro-

Cf. the discussion of St. Peter’s church and a richly decorated room at L , : – . See also Kant’s dis-
cussion of the mathematical sublime (KU, : ff.). He claims that the “partial representations of the
intuition of the senses [Sinnenanschauung]” often cannot be “apprehended” and “comprehended” simul-
taneously when we intuit very large objects, and he provides St. Peter’s church as an example ( : ).
It might be objected that if R is a part (a partial representation) of an intuition, and if R is apprehended and
reproduced such that R is a constituent of an image (i.e., R is a part of the image as specified by its canonical
composition), then the image also contains all of the parts of R (as, by stipulation, the intuition does). On
my view, the parts of R themselves need to be apprehended in order for those parts to be part of an image;
unlike apprehending an item with your hands, apprehending an item with the imagination does not hold
onto all of the parts of that item (cf. A ). For instance, if I have called up an image of my bedroom, then
that image will plausibly represent those items that I have apprehended (at some previous time) and
reproduced (e.g., the TV, the picture, etc.); however, in contrast to when I enjoy intuitive contact with
the room, I no longer have mental access (through the imagination alone) to those parts of the TV that
I haven’t apprehended (were the buttons on the left or right?) or the parts of the picture that I haven’t
apprehended (was the tower in the picture red or yellow?). The fact that I cannot recall these aspects of
my room suggests that they are not part of the “whole representation” or the “image” that I produce of
my room.
A clear intuition would seem to require that the imagination determine an intuition. Whether the deter-
mination by the imagination suffices for a clear intuition depends on one’s view of clarity, consciousness,
and apperception; moreover, the sufficiency claim also depends on how consciousness and apperception
relate to the activities of the imagination. See Footnote .
Though it might initially seem odd to say that I have two sensible representations of the front side of an
apple or the array of dots—an empirical intuition and an image—the view actually has some philosoph-
ical appeal. For instance, Nanay ( , ) defends the claim (which he takes to be inspired by Kantians
like Strawson) that amodal completion of occluded figures (representation of objects like lines behind
walls or the famous Kanizsa triangle, where we represent a triangle on the basis of perceiving three acute
angles) occurs “by means of mental imagery.”
duces some new representation through its activities, given Kant’s claim that apprehension
and reproduction “generate” a “representation” of spatial and temporal objects (A – ).
Moreover, Kant also claims that the imagination’s synthesis generates “a certain content
[Inhalt]” that is not had by the manifold of intuition itself (A /B ). Images are the fun-
damentally distinct representations that have such contents.
To conclude, there is a representation—an image—distinct from the empirical intuition
that (a) has new representational contents and that (b) does not depend on the presence
of the object of the empirical intuition. This is a general model that needs to be worked out
further. But these considerations show how the imagination apprehends intuition and re-
produces what it has previously apprehended in order to generate an image. As a result, the
structure of images depends not only on intuition, but also on the synthesis of the imagi-
nation.

3 Images and Pure Intuition

Even if images are fundamentally distinct from empirical intuitions, the Distinctness The-
sis might still be false. For Kant might be committed to the claim that pure intuitions are im-
ages. In this section, I contend that the pure intuition of space described in the Metaphysi-
cal Expositions of the Transcendental Aesthetic—the “pure” representation of an “infinite
given magnitude” with a whole-prior-to-part structure—is not an image. Nevertheless,
Kant does recognize a central role for an imagistic representation of space. But I suggest
that this “pure image” of space is fundamentally distinct from and depends on the pure
intuition of space.
It is well known that Kant discusses “pure intuitions” of space and time at length, par-
ticularly in the Transcendental Aesthetic, the crucial first division of the Critique. Less well
known is that Kant does indeed speak of “pure images” in the Schematism of the first Cri-
tique. He writes that “the pure image of all magnitudes (quantorum) for outer sense is space;
for all objects of the senses in general, it is time” (A /B ; cf. A /B ). Though some
interpreters have explicitly equated pure images and pure intuitions, I think there are at
least three reasons that Kant meant to consider them fundamentally distinct.
First, some have argued (to my mind convincingly) that the understanding, due to its
discursive nature, could not in principle produce the pure intuition of space. We can
adapt this argument about discursivity into an argument about the nature of image pro-
duction. Consider the processes of apprehension and reproduction on which image pro-
duction depends. According to Kant, apprehension is successive and goes from part to

Though I only consider spatial representations in what follows for the sake of brevity, I think the same
arguments apply to temporal representations.
Beatrice Longuenesse is a notable proponent of this view. She claims that a single representation—
the “formal intuition”—encompasses “the representations of space and time as ‘infinite given magni-
tudes’ mentioned in the Transcendental Aesthetic, the ‘pure images of all magnitudes’ mentioned in the
Schematism chapter,” and “the entia imaginaria mentioned in the table of nothing” (Longuenesse, ,
).
This claim is argued at length in McLear ( ) and Onof and Schulting ( , ff.). Falkenstein ( ,
– ) similarly argues that in the Metaphysical Expositions of space and time, Kant shows that our
original representations of infinite space and infinite time “could not have arisen from an intellectual
synthesis of parts that are themselves in no way spatial” due to the fact that humans are “finite beings”
that are “not capable of performing infinite tasks.”
whole (see A – /B – , A /B ). But Kant’s claims about the pure intuition
of space seem to be just the opposite: we are given space all at once, and the “single all-
encompassing” and “essentially single” space is prior to its parts (A /B ). Image pro-
duction depends on part-before-whole apprehension, whereas the pure intuition of space
is a whole-before-part representation. As a result, our pure intuition of space cannot itself
be an image: it cannot be an output of image production.
A second reason to distinguish the “pure image” of space from the pure intuition of space
is that images and pure intuitions are grounded in different faculties of the mind. In his
response to Eberhard, Kant provides a crucial correction to Eberhard’s conception of pure
intuition:

Where have I ever called the intuitions of space and time, in which images
[Bilder] are first of all possible, themselves images (which always presuppose
a concept of which they are the exhibition [Darstellung], e.g., the indetermi-
nate image for the concept of a triangle, wherein neither the ratios of the sides
nor those of the angles are given)? ... The ground of the possibility of sen-
sory intuition is neither of the two, neither limit of the cognitive faculty nor
image [Bild]; it is the mere receptivity peculiar to the mind, when it is affected
by something (in sensation), to receive a representation in accordance with its
subjective constitution. (UE, : ; see also UK, : )

Kant denies in this passage that our “intuitions of space and time” are “themselves im-
ages.” He explains that it is sensibility in its “mere receptivity” that is the “ground of” these
intuitions of space and time. Kant emphasizes this point in one of his essays: “what is
subjective in the formal constitution of sense, as receptivity for the intuition of an object,
is alone [allein] that which makes possible a priori, i.e., in advance of all perception, an a
priori intuition” (FM, : , emphasis added). Kant suggests in both of these passages
that sensibility in its non-spontaneous guise (as “sense” or “mere receptivity”) grounds
the features of the pure intuition of space. Yet as we saw above, the imagination implicates
the active (not merely receptive) facets of sensibility, including the synthesis of the imag-
ination in its “productive” guise. If Kant intended for image production to explain how
essential features of the pure intuitions of space and time arise, then it is unclear why he
chose to emphasize the merely receptive aspect of sensibility in these passages. After all,
for Kant, the senses cannot produce images (A n), and the features of images depend
on activities of the imagination that go above and beyond the senses. So the pure image
of space is grounded on different faculties and mental activities from the pure intuition of
space.

Of course, Kant does allow that some synthesis is “decompositional,” in that it involves dividing empir-
ically intuited wholes (as in the Second Antinomy; cf. A /B ). Yet even here, Kant claims that such
decomposition or division can only operate on a “space intuited within its boundaries” (A /B , em-
phasis added); that is, Kant seems committed only to the claim that a finite spatial whole can be divided
in the direction of whole-to-part.
Kant claims that “the ground of” the “formal intuition” of space is “mere receptivity,” and that the ground
is innate, whereas the formal intuition itself is “acquired” (UE, : ). One might then object that the
formal intuition of space is an image whereas the ground of that formal intuition is not an image. However,
this objection seems incompatible with Kant’s claim that “intuitions of space and time” are not “images.”
Instead, on my view, whenever outer sense is affected and activated, it receives or “acquires” the pure
 As anticipated in the previous passage, a third reason to distinguish the pure image of
space from the pure intuition of space is that pure intuitions ground images. Again in ref-
erence to Eberhard, Kant considers and rejects the view that space as a whole is an image
of the same kind as an image of a triangle:

For [Eberhard] understands by imagistic [Bildlichen] not something like the

figure in space as geometry would view it, but space itself (although it is hard
to understand, how one could form an image [Bild] of something external to
oneself without presupposing space)[.] (UK, : – )

This passage implies that the pure intuition of space is not an “image of something exter-
nal to oneself.” For images of outer objects “presuppos[e]” space. So to have an image of
something external to oneself, one must already possess a pure intuition of space.
These three considerations suggest that the pure image of space is fundmentally distinct
from the pure intuition of space. Now one might suspect that Kant was being imprecise in
his mention of a “pure image” in the Schematism. On the contrary, I think that there is
a way of seeing the distinct “pure image” of space as a unique cog in the machinery of the
Schematism, which I will only sketch here.
In his essay on Kästner’s treatises, Kant distinguishes two representations of space in
a way that I think directly maps onto the distinction I propose between a pure intuition
and a pure image. He claims that “metaphysics” shows how one can “have” the origi-
nal representation of space, whereas “geometry” teaches how one can “describe” a space
(UK, : ). In metaphysics, one considers how space is “given” as an “original” space,
whereas in geometry, one considers how a space is “made” or “derived” from this origi-
nally given space. Kant then consolidates this distinction between metaphysical and geo-
metrical doctrines of space by drawing a distinction between two different representations
of space, which he calls “subjectively given space” and “objectively given space.” For Kant,
“the metaphysically, i.e. originally, nonetheless merely subjectively given space ... consists
in the pure form of the sensible mode of representation of the subject, as a priori intuition”
(UK, : – ). So subjectively given space is itself a representation, that is, a pure “a
priori intuition.”
Thus, Kant makes a distinction between “metaphysical” or “subjectively given” space
and “geometrical” or “objectively given” space. Now my suggestion is that subjectively
given space is a non-imagistic representation of space, whereas objectively given space is
an imagistic representation of space. The pure image of space—objectively given space—is
a representation of space produced on the basis of the pure intuition of space—subjectively
given space. If objectively given space is equated with the pure image of space, then
it is not surprising that “geometrically and objectively given space is always finite” (UK,
intuition of space. Affection of inner or outer sense—even by the imagination (cf. B ff.)—would merely
occasion the generation of the pure intuition of space or time, but it would not ground its properties. For
further discussion very much in the spirit of my view, see Onof and Schulting ( , – ) and Tolley
( ). I thank an anonymous reviewer for pushing me to consider this possibility in more depth.
For instance, Longuenesse remarks that the idea of a pure image is “itself enigmatic” ( , ).
As I noted in Section . , both the intuition and the image are intuitive representations, and in some cases,
Kant seems to use the term “intuition” more broadly to encompass both inner/outer intuitions and im-
ages. But even if the image of a triangle is in some sense an “intuition,” it is nevertheless an intuition of a
special sort, for it is itself a representation produced from another intuition (the pure intuition of space)
that grounds it. This view is consistent with the Distinctness Thesis.
 : ). For images are produced by successive apprehension and reproduction procedures—
procedures which are themselves finite activities (the imagination cannot apprehend an
infinite quantity of items). Our imagistic representation of space represents a finite space,
whereas our non-imagistic representation of space represents infinite space. This observa-
tion blocks the possibility that the pure intuition of space becomes the pure image of space,
since the pure intuition of space does not become finite—it remains infinite.
Though a full account of the pure image of space would need to take into account Kant’s
understanding of geometric construction, we at least have the resources to make sense
of why Kant invokes the pure images of space and time in the Schematism. The topic of
the Schematism is the “subsumptio[n] of an object under a concept” (A /B ). Recall
too that a schema is a “representation of a general procedure of the imagination for pro-
viding a concept with its image” (A /B ). So Kant’s thought is that in order for spatial
objects to be subsumed under concepts, the imagination must produce an imagistic “ob-
jectively given” representation of space. For instance, if I “place” three lines mutually
orthogonally to one another in space, then I am carving space into three distinct dimen-
sions (see B ). This is a pure image of space with canonical compositionality; the pure
image explicitly represents three-dimensional (not two- or four-dimensional) space. So
subsumption requires that the imagination produce “objectively given space”—and this
product relies on the pure intuition of space or “subjectively given space.”

4 Defending the No Intuitions Thesis: A Sketch

In the previous sections, I argued that Kant accepts the Image Thesis and the Distinctness
Thesis. For him, the imagination produces images, and images are fundamentally distinct
from both pure and empirical intuitions. We will now turn to the controversial No Intu-
itions Thesis, according to which the imagination does not produce intuitions of any kind.
The No Intuitions Thesis is a natural complement to the Image and Distinctness Theses.
For if the imagination produces images via the apprehension and reproduction of intu-
itions, and if these images are not intuitions, then the imagination cannot also produce in-
tuitions via these same processes of apprehension and reproduction. Instead, the senses are
a natural candidate for the original producers of intuition. Kant does after all claim that “it
is the business of the senses [Sinne] to intuit; that of the understanding, to think.” Never-
theless, there are some initially compelling reasons to think that the imagination produces
intuitions or grounds their essential features. My goal in this section is to show that once

One interpretive puzzle is that Kant does not provide an explicit schema for both space and time. Instead,
he associates the pure images of space and time (as quanta or particular magnitudes) with the single
schema of number (as quantitas or magnitude in general or as such) (A /B ). This raises further ques-
tions regarding the debate about “top-down” versus “bottom-up” views that I considered in the previous
section.
This is not to say that every meaningful geometrical concept must be paired with a corresponding image;
rather, it simply to say that subsumption depends on some image production that realizes our capacity to
produce images of certain kinds. For instance, Kant denies that it needs to be the case that one “actually
drew” a -gon in order to ground its concept (UE, : ).
I elide the precise means by which this “placing” occurs in geometry; for a thorough discussion, see Shabel
( ).
Prol, : ; cf. Kant’s suggestion that the senses “intuit a priori” ( : , note).
we appreciate the Image and Distinctness Theses, many of Kant’s central texts on the imag-
ination admit of a reading that is compatible with the No Intuitions Thesis.

4.1 Empirical Representation: Memory and Hallucination

To take our first case, Kant maintains that the imagination is involved in memory and rec-
ollection of previous representations (e.g., Anth, : ). As Kant puts it, the “reproductive
imagination” can “bring back into the mind an empirical intuition had previously” (Anth,
: ). There are (at least) two different ways of cashing out this statement. On the first
model, empirical intuitions are “reproduced” in the way that a copy machine copies an
original paper. The copy is not itself the original empirical intuition. Perhaps all that is
preserved is an image formed from the empirical intuition, not the empirical intuition it-
self. On the first model, an image or some copied representation figures into a state that
allows us to remember the episode (perhaps accompanied by various beliefs that link the
image to a particular episode). On the second model, to “reproduce” an empirical intu-
ition is to bring the same intuition “back into mind,” just as I “re-produce” the same (non-
counterfeit!) driver’s license every time an airport agent asks for it. On this view, the em-
pirical intuition is stored, not a copy of it.
The key point is that neither view of memory requires that empirical intuitions depend on
the imagination for their production, even if their preservation or reproduction requires the
imagination. Even if an empirical intuition could be preserved after its object is absent,
this would not show that empirical intuitions (or any of their features) depend for their
generation or production on the imagination.
However, cases of mental imagery and hallucination pose a special challenge to the No
Intuitions Thesis. The objection goes like this. Suppose I imagine a dog with three horns,
even though I am not sensing and have never sensed a dog with three horns. I could sim-
ilarly hallucinate this object. In these cases, the imagination actively recombines sensory
qualities to represent an object that I have never seen before. But here’s the rub, so goes the
objection: when I am imagining the dog’s brown body and its red horns, I am producing a
new empirical intuition, because my imagination is recombining red and blue sensations
into a new spatial configuration. Moreover, Kant adds that the representation of such a dog
in hallucination has the same “quality” in both “truth and dream” (Prol, : ), such that
we should deny that “every intuitive representation” entails the “existence” of an outer
object (B ).

Kant is reported to have described memory in terms of images in one of his anthropology lectures. The
lecture notes state that the “reproductive faculty” of imagination, which “lies at the ground of” memory,
is the “faculty to bring forth [hervorbringen] images of things that were once present” (AA, : VMe ).
Kant does sometimes suggest that the imagination alone is not sufficient for memory, since memory re-
quires imagination “connected with consciousness” or “apperception” (MM, : , : ). See also
Kant’s discussion of “perduring” memory at MK , : ; MVi, : . Kant does not seem to offer a
solution to the outstanding problem surrounding the “mnemicity” of memory—that is, how memories
are distinct from mere imaginings. See Michaelian and Sutton ( ) for a review.
The first model seems friendlier to strong object-dependence views of empirical intuition (that is, views
on which empirical intuition depends on the actual and simultaneous existence of its object), while the
second model seems friendlier to opponents of this view. For a helpful discussion, see Stephenson ( ,
). However, it is not clear how Stephenson’s “memory” argument against strong object-dependence
views can rule out the first model of memory.
Andrew Stephenson has argued that such passages indicate that there are “hallucinatory intuition[s]” in
 But Kant’s texts on these points allow that an image, as a “mere effect of the imagina-
tion,” is the common element in veridical and non-veridical cases (B ). As explained in
Section . , the image itself would not involve sensation production in the way that em-
pirical intuitions do, but instead would involve rearrangements of traces of previously pro-
duced sensations. Thus the No Intuitions Thesis can make sense of Kant’s suggestion that
empirical intuitions “would depend immediately on” or “presuppose” the “presence of an
object,” while allowing that some intuitive representations like images lack this depen-
dence (see Prol, : ). For Kant does not think that images have this same dependence on
present objects that empirical intuitions do. At the same time, there is a qualitatively iden-
tical representation of the object—an image—that can be entertained in both veridical and
non-veridical perception.

4.2 Pure Representation: Spaces, Times, and Exhibition

As I began to argue in Section , there are a variety of ways that Kant seems to deny the
imagination a substantive role in the production of the pure intuitions of space and time.
To repeat, Kant thinks that “the formal constitution of sense”—not the imagination—is
“alone [allein] that which makes possible a priori, i.e., in advance of all perception, an a
priori intuition” (FM, : , emphasis added). Similarly, in the Transcendental Aesthetic
of the Critique, Kant denies that space and time are “creatures of the power of imagination
[Geschöpfe der Einbildungskraft]” (A /B ). And Kant explains this claim by invoking im-
ages: if geometry merely described a “creature” of the imagination, then Kant thinks it is
unclear “how things would have to agree necessarily” with such an “image [Bilde] that we
form of them by ourselves and in advance” (Prol, : ). But Kant claims precisely this for
our pure intuition of space: objects do necessarily agree with the intuition of space that we
form prior to encountering those objects.
Still, some of Kant’s texts seem to stand in tension with the No Intuitions Thesis about
the imagination. Kant does indeed claim that without apprehension by the imagination,
“we could have a priori neither the representations of space nor of time” (A ). Yet when
Kant claims that the imagination is required for these “purest” and “most fundamental”
representations of space and time, he does so in his argument for the claim that appre-

which “the reproductive imagination fully replaces the object and is attributed similar causal powers” in
producing the intuition (Stephenson, , – ). Though I agree with Stephenson that there is a com-
mon element between veridical and non-veridical perception for Kant, I think the common element is an
image. Ultimately, much of the comparison between our views depends on how to understand Stephen-
son’s “information encoding” reading on which inner sense and the reproductive imagination “filter” the
“information originally received through outer sense” (Stephenson, , , ).
Note that this differs with the first model in the memory case, in that in memory an image is etiologically
related to a particular empirical intuition, whereas in hallucination is etiologically related to sensations, but
no particular empirical intuition.
So along with the “inner intuition” proposal by McLear ( , – ), I agree that hallucinations occur
when the subject confuses an outer sensing with an imagining. However, I do not think that the image
is thereby an inner intuition. Though I cannot treat his view exhaustively here, it is worth noting that
McLear’s inner intuition proposal has a hard time making sense of everyday mental imagery, as when I
imagine a (spatial) triangle and a (spatial) dog shape. For inner intuitions have time as their form, not
space. As with all representations, images are in time (A – ), but this is consistent with images them-
selves being spatial representations that are “ordered” in time and, therefore, ordered in inner intuitions.
Cf. Stephenson ( ).
hension and reproduction are required for such representations (A , A ). Since Kant
claims that “apprehension” is “directed at the intuition” (A ), it would be odd if these
“representations” of space and time were themselves the pure intuitions of space and time.
Kant’s examples actually seem to tell against this identification: his examples of repre-
sentations of space and time are “a line,” “one noon to the next,” and “a certain number”
(A ). These three “representations” are plausibly examples of images (see Tolley, ,
– ). Therefore, this passage does not spell trouble for the No Intuitions Thesis.
Kant also claims that space is an “ens imaginarium” (A /B ). Let’s stipulate that this
passage is indeed meant to assert that space in some sense depends on the imagination.
This claim comes in the final paragraph of the Transcendental Analytic, where Kant draws
up a table of the “concept of nothing,” which is a species of the “concept of an object in
general” (A /B ). So more specifically, Kant seems to be saying that space, considered
as an “object in general,” depends on the imagination.
There is evidence in this passage that space considered as “object” refers to the pure im-
age of space, not the pure intuition. When Kant unpacks his conception of an ens imagi-
narium, he claims that space is an ens imaginarium because “if extended beings were not
perceived [wahrgenommen], one would not be able to represent space” (A /B ). The
fact that Kant seems to be asserting that our ability to represent space depends on our per-
ception of objects suggests that he is talking about an imagistic representation of space.
For Kant insists that the (non-imagistic) pure intuition of space itself is not a perception
(A /B ), and that it does not depend on perception (B ). So Kant must be referring to
space represented “objectively” and imagistically in this passage. This objective represen-
tation is plausibly the pure image of space, not the pure intuition of space.
A similar response on behalf of the No Intuitions Thesis could be made regarding Kant’s
claim that the “unity” of a formal intuition “presupposes a synthesis” (B n). In this heav-
ily contested passage, Kant is marking two ways that space is “represented a priori” (B ).
And he specifically claims that the “unity” of the “formal intuition” ultimately “presup-
poses a synthesis” (B n), even though the “form of intuition” (which Kant himself calls
a “pure intuition,” A /B ) does not presuppose such a synthesis. It is the formal intuition
that involves “space, represented as object (as is really required in geometry).” In line with
Section , Kant likely has in mind an “objective” representation of space involved in geom-
etry that he associates with the imagination’s synthesis and image formation, and which
contrasts with the “subjective” original pure intuition of space.
Now it cannot be denied that Kant very closely associates pure intuition with the imag-
ination, particularly under its “productive” guise: “pure intuitions of space and time be-
long to the productive faculty” of imagination. But a proponent of the No Intuitions The-

For a sympathetic treatment of this passage, see especially the extensive argument by Onof and Schulting
( ).
Anth, : . Cf. KU, : . For instance, some recent interpreters have suggested that even if the imagina-
tion cannot produce the pure intuition of space itself, it could still be responsible for producing intuitions
of finite spatial regions. See especially (Grüne, , ). I think Grüne quite correctly argues (a) that the ar-
guments provided in McLear ( ) only show that the pure intuition of space as an infinite whole cannot
be a product of synthesis, and (b) that he fails to show that no intuition can be produced by synthesis. But
the No Intuitions Thesis could maintain, in line with the Image and Distinctness Theses, that the imag-
ination indeed “makes” an image of finite space, but that this image is itself a “description” of the space
provided in a fundamentally distinct pure intuition of space. While a full engagement with Grüne’s view
would require a detailed discussion of geometric construction, I suspect that any differences between our
sis can point to a key elucidation, namely, that the imagination is “productive” because
it is “a faculty of the original exhibition [Darstellung] of the object (exhibitio originaria).”
Plausibly, exhibition (Darstellung) is not merely a synonym for intuition (Anschauung) of
an object. Kant often confusingly associates the idea of “giving” an object with both exhi-
bition and intuition. Intuitions give objects to the mind. In contrast, images and the imag-
ination are involved in “giving” a “corresponding intuition to the concepts of the under-
standing” (B ). But this latter sense of “give”—giving an object to a concept instead of
to the mind—is a fundamentally distinct notion for Kant. Exhibition is this activity of giv-
ing an object to a concept, whereas intuition is the activity of giving an object to the mind
(see A /B , A /B ). And Kant associates exhibition with images when he claims
that “concepts of number equally require pure sensible images [Zahlbegriffe bedürfen eben so
reinsinnlicher Bilder]” (AA, : ). One can thus understand the pure intuitions of space and
time as “sketch pads” given to the mind on which we “draw” images of certain shapes and
numbers; such an activity of drawing “exhibits” features of space that the pure intuition
alone does not exhibit.
To bring this discussion to a close, we should hold apart three different things that are
not equivalent for Kant: (a) space itself, (b) parts of space (the “manifold” of spaces), and
(c) objects in space. One way to understand Kant’s claims that is consistent with the No In-
tuitions Thesis is that the imagination produces neither space nor the manifold of spaces.
The senses, not the imagination, produce the pure intuition of space and provide the man-
ifold of spaces. Though this is not the final word on pure intuition in Kant, I hope this
model clarifies what opponents of the No Intuitions Thesis need to argue. The No Intu-
itions Thesis allows that the imagination is required to represent determinate objects in
space—objects like squares and triangles. But the No Intuitions denies both (a) that es-
sential features of the pure intuitions of space depend on the imagination and (b) that
the imagination produces the manifold of spaces. As I argued in Section , facts about im-
age production seem ill-equiped for challenging the No Intuitions Thesis on either of these
points. So appealing to image-producing procedures of the imagination in such an argu-
ment is not a promising strategy for challenging the No Intuitions Thesis.

5 Conclusion
This essay argued that for Kant, the imagination generates images (the Image Thesis) and
that these images are fundamentally distinct from empirical and pure intuitions (the Dis-
tinctness Thesis). Moreover, these two theses complement the claim that the imagination
does not generate intuitions at all (the No Intuitions Thesis). As I noted in the introduc-
tion, a full defense of the No Intuitions Thesis would need to incorporate an account of the
Transcendental Deduction, since many interpreters find in this section of the first Critique
the strongest philosophical considerations for thinking that the imagination must actu-

views would rest on how to understand the relationship between space and a “description” of space.
Kant’s proposal is also philosophically attractive: many views of mental imagery maintain that mental
images depend on some antecedent spatially structured but non-imagistic representation. See the view
developed in Knauff ( ).
This is one way to read Kant’s claim that the “synopsis of the manifold a priori” occurs “through sense”
(A ); cf. B , B . For accounts on which synopsis is responsible for pure or empirical intuition pro-
duction, see Onof and Schulting ( , ff.), Matherne ( , ff.), and Tolley ( , ).
ally produce intuitions (usually because they think the understanding plays a role in the
generation of intuition). Nevertheless, Section . provided a sketch of the imagination’s
“determination” function that serves as a starting point for an account of the Transcenden-
tal Deduction friendly to the Image Thesis, Distinctness Thesis, and No Intuitions Thesis.
The Image Thesis and Distinctness Thesis raise several questions for further investiga-
tion, and I’ll note three. First, there is the general question of what the different functions
of images and intuitions are in cognition (Erkenntnis) of various kinds. Broadly speaking,
intuitions and the senses figure into the explanation of how finite subjects can be related
to objects in the first place, whereas images and the imagination figure into the explana-
tion of how intuited objects can be “determined” and, ultimately, related to concepts. But
the precise sense in which a particular cognition depends on actual image formation re-
mains an open question. Second, and relatedly, more work is required to determine how
schemata relate differently to images, on the one hand, and intuitions, on the other. Given
the diversity among schemata, it is possible that some schemata depend on images (or in-
tuitions), while some images depend on schemata. Finally, there remains the question of
how precisely images depend on consciousness or vice versa; similarly there remains the
question of how precisely images depend on concepts or vice versa. And again, given the
diversity of empirical, mathematical, and philosophical concepts that Kant invokes, it is
possible that there will be no one-size-fits-all answer to this question.
However these questions play out, the present essay provided a clearer conception of
the contribution that the imagination—as distinct from sense—makes to sensibility. The
contribution of sensibility to human cognition relies on a complex interweaving of both
sense and imagination, and adequately understanding this relationship requires us to take
into account Kant’s theory of images.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Max Edwards, Claudi Brink, Rosalind Chaplin, Lisa Shabel, Lucy Al-
lais, Eric Watkins, and especially Clinton Tolley for their invaluable comments on early
drafts of this paper. The helpful feedback from three anonymous reviewers for this jour-
nal greatly improved the final version. I would also like to thank Johannes Haag, Michael
Oberst, and Ayoob Shahmoradi for extensive discussion on various topics addressed in this
paper.

Anth Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht

FM Preisschrift über die Fortschritte der Metaphysik

JL Jäsche Logik

KU Kritik der Urteilskraft

LB Logik Blomberg

In particular, see Golob ( ) and de Sá Pereira ( ) for approaches that seem compatible with these
Theses.
For a discussion of cognition in Kant, see Willaschek and Watkins ( ).
MD Metaphysik Dohna

MK 2 Metaphysik K

ML 1 Metaphysik L

ML 2 Metaphysik L

MMr Metaphysik Mrongovius

MVi Metaphysik Vigilantius

MVo Metaphysik Volckmann

Prol Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik, die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten
können

R Reflexionen

TG Träume eines Geistersehers, erläutert durch Träume der Metaphysik

UE Über eine Entdeckung, nach der alle neue Kritik der reinen Vernunft durch eine ältere
entbehrlich gemacht werden soll

UK Über Kästners Abhandlungen

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